Playing on the soccer team at the university has been one of the greatest experiences of my life. The girls on the team have become like family to me. Coming into the school we were all promised a certain amount that we would have to pay, due to various scholarships and the fact that we played on the soccer team, we would be paying less then most of the other students attending. This year a lot of the girls on the team were getting charged a ridiculous amount just to attend the school. The school had told us last year that the amount we were paying wouldn’t change through out our time at LSU, however when we got our statements this year the amounts had gone up by thousands of dollars. We fought and fought to get the prices down, and we thought we did until one day about 10 girls or so on the soccer team got letters saying that they would be able to pay the amount of last year if they didn’t play soccer. Giving those girls a choice to both quit on 12 other girls, half way into the season and ruin the season because we wouldn’t have a team, or they could play if they paid the new amount, which was thousands more. Last year the women’s soccer team did extremely well and broke records at LSU, and to think that the school would want to take that away shows their lack of support and caring to those who are trying to go that extra mile to help out our school. We as a soccer team are representing our school in many ways, and by giving these packages to the girls this year shows that the financial system made mistakes last year, and they should have to be the ones that suffer, rather then the students that they broke promises to. As a result of the schools incompetence half of the girls plan on leaving after this quarter, so they’re not in debt for life, and so they can go somewhere and not be screwed over continuously. It’s hard to trust this university when we are constantly being lied to and manipulated, just so the school can get every extra dollar out of you. It’s not fair that we give all of our extra time to the soccer program, to make this school more known, and all they want to do is take that away from us by charging us obscene amounts of money. If the school did care about their students like they swear they do, then they wouldn’t be trying to screw over the people that are trying to help the school by representing them and giving them a good name, as well as making the school a more popular place. Both the men and women’s soccer team always have a lot of students attending the games, but if the school keeps trying to screw us over, then our school will no longer have any teams. Maybe the school will realize how dumb they are being, and actually try to fix the problems for once, instead of having students fight and fight just to be able to afford to go here, and maybe one day they university will care about the people trying to help them, instead of just caring about how much money they can get out of everyone
